


Mirage

by LittlestMedic



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, and then disappointed, but ultimately happy, demon mama is happy to see her son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 19:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11881428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlestMedic/pseuds/LittlestMedic
Summary: From a prompt on tumblr; "Hedwyn stumbled into Jodi's life in the Downside the same way he had in the Commonwealth: with scraped knees and covered in mud. They both laughed until they cried when they learned she could STILL carry him with one arm, and both found the Downside just a little easier to bear in the days that followed. (Rukey had the luck of missing out on Hedwyn giving Jodi the reason for his exile, though; that was an argument that shook dust from rocks a mile in any direction.)"





	Mirage

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy this piece of happy friendship between our favourite demon mama and her foster son.  
> Be kind-- I haven't written for ages and this is my attempt to break writers block.

  
     Just a little more. Just a little  _further_. There had to be more here. There were figures on the horizon—but then, there were always figures on the horizon. The word for that had evaded his mind for hours, and had only come rushing back when he had collapsed at the side of the river he had been following for days now.  
  
_Mirages_.  
  


* * *

  
    There was something familiar about the arms that had carried Hedwyn from the mud where he had fallen, exhausted and hungry, and to the side of a hesitant, sputtering little campfire. Something he realised he had missed sorely.   
The gentle, but confident hands bandaging his knees. Not with soft, clean cotton, as it had been last time (how many years ago?), but from scraps of cloth ripped from her cloak, the rough material doing very little to make the pain any better.  
  
     “Tch. At least a decade on, and I’m still picking you up and wiping your tears away.”   
  
     At the sound of her voice, Hedwyn forced his eyes open. Even with her curled horns and massive form, she was impossible not to recognise, even if her voice hadn’t sent waves of nostalgia and comfort rocketing through him.  
  
    Jodariel gazed at him with something he had never seen in her before—wet eyes. Eyes big and leaking with a sort of heartbroken joy that was over-the-moon that he was here with her again, but crushed that he was  _here_ , and not in the Commonwealth, safe and happy, where he was supposed to be.  
He hugged her. What else could he have done?   
  


* * *

  
    Jodi and Hedwyn hugged until they had begun to laugh, and then laughed until the reality of their situation began to set in and they were sobbing. They clutched each other, pausing only to put some more wood on the fire.

    “What are you doing here, silly boy?” she had asked. Her voice was deeper than before. He tried not to stare at the horns either side of her head as he wiped his tears away and answered.  
  
    “Will you believe me if I say I missed you too much?”  
  
    “No.” she smiled despite herself. “What’s the real reason, Hedwyn? You were far too smart to end up here. What did you do?”  
  
    He ran a hand over his face, reaching for her hands again. She took his own in hers, her hands larger than he remembered. They’d always been bigger than his—he was just a kid when she took him in—but now he was an adult, and they were still bigger.  _She_  was bigger.  
  
    “I loved the wrong person, Mama Jodi.”   
  
    She didn’t flinch at his old nickname for her. She merely tilted her head, gently inquiring for more detail. He gave a shuddering breath, knowing that of all people to tell about his failure, Jodariel was one he had hoped would never have to listen. Not because he was ashamed—he would never be ashamed of loving his Fikani. No, because he dreaded what she would say.  
  
   “Who did you love, Hedwyn?”   
She had noticed his pause. He took a deep breath, another shaky breath that was unrelated to his previous exhaustion or the stress of finding Jodariel again.  
  
    “She… I met her when I was… We were both…” he stopped, shaking his head, “I loved a Harp, Mama Jodi. Fikani.”  
  
    Jodariel went quiet, even though she was hardly speaking as was. There was a noticeable tightening of her hands around his, and he got the distinct impression she was counting to ten, and then to twenty, and then to thirty and still struggling to keep her composure.  
  
    “She wasn’t like the others, Jodi, she was—”  
  
    “She was still a Harp, Hedwyn. They killed your parents. They’ve killed hundreds—no, thousands of our people. Why would you think them capable of anything but evil?”  
  
    Her voice was cold, and he let her drop his hands as she stood to poke at the fire with a long stick. His stomach twisted—what had he been expecting? What had he hoped she would say? Why hadn’t he prepared anything for this?  
The answer made him wince;  
_Because you never thought she’d still be alive down here, after all this time_.  
  
    The thought made him feel ashamed. Of all people to survive down here, it wasn’t exactly surprising that he would find Captain Jodariel. There were stories about her, weren’t there? Of course she would find a way to survive in an environment most thought brutally impossible to live within.  
  
    “The errors of her people are not the errors of Fikani.”  
  
     She looked up at him, eyes searching him silently. Huffing, she turned back to the fire, squaring her shoulders.  
“I brought you up smarter than that, Hedwyn. I brought you up to read people by their actions, didn’t I? I brought you up to care for those in need.”  
  
     “You brought me up to love people for who they are inside, and Fikani is as beautiful inside as any human. You brought me up to care for those in need, yes, and we needed each other. Each of us had suffered in this war.”   
She flinched at his tone, the louder volume of his argument making her shoulders stiffening further. Hedwyn looked carefully at her horns—did she still see herself as human? Did she still believe in the same things as before? Surely she would understand—

     “And that is why they exiled you. For—for fraternising,” she said eventually, breaking through his reverie, “But even that is not a crime worthy of exile down here. If that is what they sent you down here for, then the Commonwealth has become even more brutal in the time I have been gone.”  
  
    “…No, Jodi. There’s… There’s more.”   
Hedwyn swallowed, hesitant to reveal the rest.   
She didn’t even look at him this time, although the long sigh that caused the fire to flicker nervously made him sure that she had heard him.

    “I… I wanted to see her. I left my post, and then—then they attacked, and a squad… A whole squad was killed. Because I left my post.”   
  
    She turned this time, stalking towards him. She towered over him, blocking out the light of the fire as he tried not to scramble away in fear. Even when he’d misbehaved as a child, she had never frightened him. The only thing that had frightened him about her when he was a child was the fear that she too would leave and not come  back, just like his parents.  
  
    “Military desertion. Oh, Hedwyn.”   
She spent a long time staring at him, as if trying to figure him out as some kind of huge puzzle. They stayed like that for a long time, regarding each other, before Jodariel straightened and went to sit by the fire once more.  
“Silly, silly boy…” she breathed, shaking her head, “To throw it all away…”  
  
    “There’s one good side though, Mama Jodi,” he hesitantly called as he moved closer to her, “I got to see you again, didn’t I?”  
  
    Jodariel went quiet again at this, before her mouth quirked up, and she reached for him with one arm, picking him up with ease. He yelped, half startled and half indignant at the treatment. She tousled his hair, hugging him to her chest again and putting him down gently.  
“And I got to see that I can still pick you up with one arm,” she replied, the cold gone from her voice, “Oh, Hedwyn. I missed you.”  
  
    “I missed you too, Mama Jodi.”

* * *

  
     When they found Rukey, it was together. The Downside was better—happier, maybe, with someone else by your side, and with the Cur it was practically like family. Rukey had quickly learned that to discuss Hedwyn’s exile with Jodariel around was to risk her stalking away to patrol the perimeter for the third time in an evening, and when Hedwyn finally did tell him the full story, Rukey had already decided that to see Jodariel enraged was dangerous, and he was damned lucky he’d not had the misfortune to be part of their merry group back then.  
  
     The Downside wasn’t so bad, Hedwyn had decided.

     Not with Jodi. Not with Rukey. Not with the two of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to request other things that I may or may not attempt to write at my tumblr: www.littlestmedic.tumblr.com


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